JetBrains Beefs Up Companion Program

With addition to the companion program for its popular Java IDE, JetBrains defends its place in a space quickly being commoditized by open-source alternatives.

JetBrains on Feb. 27 is expected to announce the addition of the JProfiler Java application profiling tool to the JetBrains Companion Products Program.
JProfiler joins the ranks of JetBrains-certified companions for IntelliJ IDEA, JetBrains flagship Java IDE (integrated development environment).
JetBrains is based in Prague, Czech Republic, and has offices in St. Petersburg, Russia and Boston. JProfiler is the technology of ej-technologies of Munich, Germany.

Alex Tkachman, director of marketing for JetBrains, said JetBrains extensively screens and tests all JetBrains companion products to ensure integration with the IntelliJ platform.

Tkachman also said JetBrains internal developers use the companion products themselves in their everyday work.
The JetBrains Companion Products Program provides developers with a centralized resource for third-party extensions for IntelliJ IDEA, he said.
Tkachman, who is based in St. Petersburg, said JetBrains started the companion program only a few months ago but already there are seven tools in the program, including coding tools, libraries and components, and Web frameworks.
The other products in the companion program are: Refactor-J, Refactor-X, Inspection-JS, JNIWrapper, ComfyJ, Jexplorer, and Hibero.
"We have a good pipeline of products under evaluation," Tkachman said. Indeed, company officials said there are more than 15 products currently in evaluation.
Meanwhile, Tkachman said despite ongoing commoditization in the Java IDE space based primarily on the rapid growth of the Eclipse open-source IDE and the re-emergence of the NetBeans open source IDE, JetBrains intends to stick to its proprietary roots.
"As long as we are able to continue to build the best Java IDE in the market, we feel very comfortable," Tkachman said.
Tkachman said JetBrains does not support Eclipse and will not do so in "the foreseeable future."
Because "the functionality we provide to our customers is much better than Eclipse. What reason is there to change?"
However, Tkachman said JetBrains supports open-source development.
"We have very active users and developers, and we support about 250 to 300 open-source projects," he said.
Moreover, Tkachman noted that "We have great respect for open source." Yet, "we do not feel any pressure from open source," he said.
Click here to read more about Borlands changes in the face of the open-source movement.
"Its just another way of doing business. We cannot do like Sun and IBM and make money on hardware or services."
Earlier this month, Borland Software Corp. announced that it was divesting of its IDE tools business.
The impact of Eclipse on Borlands JBuilder Java development tool played into that decision.
To read more about Borlands plans to divest its IDE tools business, click here.
Meanwhile, related to the JProfiler companion relationship, JetBrains and ej-technologies also jointly announced a special Companion Program pricing arrangement for their products.
Existing IntelliJ IDEA customers are eligible for a 10 percent discount on the Standard Per-Developer JProfiler License, and existing JProfiler customers can get the same discount on the Commercial License for IntelliJ IDEA.
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Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.